Archive - Jul 2006 - Article

Global commerce talks at the World Trade Organization collapsed Monday as top powers failed to agree on steps toward liberalizing trade in farm and manufactured goods.

Hopes were fading on Tuesday of keeping alive a global free trade deal after trading powers failed to make a breakthrough at a marathon first session, diplomats said.

Starting Sunday (23 July) itself, this will be another decisive week for the WTO's Doha negotiations, as it will become much clearer whether the G6 members will be able to implement the "new flexibilities" that their political leaders reportedly pledged to provide for their countries' positions.

No one who was not there seems to know what actually happened at the G8 Summit leaders' meeting with the leaders of five developing countries in the lunchtime "outreach working lunch" at St Petersburg on Monday (17 July).

"Flexibilities" was the new key theme and indeed the key word after a short meeting of the G6 Ministers held at the WTO on Monday (17 July) night, to follow up on the lunch meeting at St Petersburg a few hours earlier that the G8 leaders had with the leaders of five developing countries.

Fresh from his discussions at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh provided a cautiously optimistic insight into the prospects of the deadlocked WTO negotiations.

World leaders

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) is to stage countrywide general strikes in August to halt removal of industrial tariffs which are expected to open up markets and destroy more jobs and industries.

Trade ministers from the U.S. and five other World Trade Organization members have agreed at a meeting today (July 17) to gather again twice this month in Geneva in an effort to push the struggling WTO talks forward.

Group of Eight leaders met key developing countries on Monday to give a push to world trade talks at a big-power summit strained by divisions over the Middle East.